Katarack21

Oh, man. You missed out. On top of wanting to kill everything everywhere, Lilarcor is *REALLY* powerful and is a berserking sword. You put it on Minsc and he just turns into a freaking crazy awesome chaotic good meatgrinder.

Jon gets a pass because I'd rather he didn't conduct more... experiments on me The pain will only be passing; you should survive the process.

hey, i had a lot of plans for my spare cash... though, non of them counted on somebody shooting my cat. had to pay a $1,200 vet bill i didn't actually have the money for. still haven't gotten out from under that yet. Holy crap. That's *****ed*.

BtF6nW w6Pd2u SHbEXB cCedpo Hmm. Looks like a games authorization key.

I was tapped out that month. By the time I got paid, that part of the fundraising was done and all I could do was give a few bucks to the Black Isle Bastards.

Bloody pisses me off. I shouldn't have to pay Something Awful money so I can see Josh Sawyers words about Deadfire. I should be able to see those words here, on his the companies *official Deadfire forums*. At the very least they should copy and repaste that ****.

The art is *SPECTACULAR*.

I had this dream of building a multiclass mage/fighter who exclusively uses summoned weapons and self-buffs, disdaining outside influences like armor and blades as for lesser people. That is basically a total no-go as long as summoned weapons have a six-second cast time. It just totally ineffectualizes summoned weapons.

It's like proposing limits for pink unicorn flight paths. I mean, go ahead...but it's really stupid.

I can name like ten ****ing societies that have more than two genders. Evolution has determined sex, it has nothing to do with gender. That's psuedoscience bull****.

Mostly to me it seems like people encounter a gay character and freak the **** out. I wonder if these are the same people who freak the **** out when they encounter an actual gay person. In KOTOR I Force Persuaded somebody into giving me money because I could. In BG I murdered children. In Fable I killed like a half-dozen of my "wives". In Fallout 3 I *sold people into sexual slavery*. But including gay characters is *right out* for these people? I simply do not understand.

There are self-buff that grant you Concentration if you are afraid of your spell get interrupted, and almost all these buff are instantly casted. But yeah I agree 6 sec is a bit too long. Right. So in order for my summoned-weapons fighter to be effective, I have to cast a spell *before* I can summon my weapon, thus requiring *two* spells to be cast before I can walk up and smack a dude in the face. Not fun.

"That would be copywrite infringement. This is a psionic soul-blade."

and as Gromnir pointed out some time ago, if you wanna analogize to self buff, then you should accept reduced durations. casting time and durations is all part how such spells is balanced. the summoned weapons, with durations equivalent to other self buffs, will sudden become far less useful in the more challenging encounters of the game. HA! Good Fun! No. Because the universal self buff would give you +15 ACC for everything - while the +15 on the weapon is only useful if you attack with said weapon. But if shorter durations are required to make the summoneing process faster then so be it. Somebody who wants to focus on summoned weapons can call forth one and the same weapon twice per encounter - or just use a summoned weapon from another spell level. I'd rather have a fast cast with a shorter duration than a long cast with a long duration. you do realize distinguishing universal is simple another quality which is making the analogy less​ useful, yes? you made an observation 'bout self buffs being quick casts and analogized summoned weapons to self buffs. self buffs often have limited durations, regardless o' the effects. the more you help us distinguish summons and self buffs, the more you relegate durations and cast times to being nothing more than ordinary aspect o' balancing rather than some kinda inherent quality o' a class o' spells. HA! Good Fun! Durations and cast times *are* nothing more than ordinary aspects of balancing. But you have to balance summon weapon spells *as summon weapon spells*, around their own unique capabilities and limitations. Summoned weapons are a distinct class of spells--they are not like self-buffs, attack spells, or CC. Just as you cannot balance a fireball the same way you would balance blind, you can't balance summoned weapons the same way you balance self-buffs--because they are different in how they work and if you do so you'll end up with badly balanced spells.

Summon animation. Also a true instant cast would be an unfair advantage (if very small) as you could instantly change damage type (regular weapon switch takes time) Regular weapon switch only causes recovery time, which one could add to summoned weapon spells--instant cast, short recovery time (equal to weapon switch recovery would be fair). I'd rather have that than wait two seconds while casting and possibly interrupted.

Summoned weapons already have a built-in disadvantage verse other spells, in that you have to physically walk up and hit a dude with it before the spell has any effect. I don't see why they can't be instant cast.

I have no desire to do a bunch of mathematical calculations to decide where or not I can take these sandals vs that sword.

At the very, very least weapon summons *need* to be fast-cast. It's basically necessary to make a summoned-weapons fighter work at all.

Only now they don't have a name attached.

Happy Holidays! And, may I say, *thank you* for dropping the patch before the Christmas break--gives me something to do while everything is shut down!

What if you don't like stealth mechanics and don't want to go through such a tedious process before every fight to make even thinking about using a caster worth it? This is essentially prebuffing when the entire point of having buffs be restricted to being cast in-combat was to avoid the tedium of having to go through bull**** every time you want to god damn kill things. All I want to do is play a fighter who uses summoned weapons and self-buffs to do melee combat. It shouldn't be that difficult!

Even given that, would still leave summoned weapons as a serious problem.

The duration on Cipher charms (whisper of treason, puppet master) are actually ten seconds, not six; when you run the math though and adjust for misses and grazes (vs. equivalent defense etc.), the expected duration does work out as less than the cast+recovery time, so you're literally taking yourself out of the fight for longer than you're taking the enemy. The math on that does change a bit once you adjust for dexterity, intelligence, etc., but it's still crap. Compare with the first game where Whisper of Treason also had a ten second base duration, but a "fast" casting time (which I believe was a little over two seconds in practice). To get a comparable ratio of cast time to duration, Whisper would need a duration of over thirty seconds in Deadfire! And then you have the problem that a thirty second charm effect is just crazy long (especially after Intelligence is figured in) and functionally game-ending (especially when cast on players). So you can't just multiply the durations out because then it's too powerful. Personally, I think a lot of cipher powers specifically need to be returned to fast/instant cast (Ciphers have to build up focus anyway; they're already casting far less than the ex-vancians in Deadfire). This is especially true for the crowd control powers (for the reasons above). Past that, for the ex-vancians. . . they need to go back through and, for each power and spell, decide whether it falls in the "this is a standard every fight bread and butter kinda thing" (i.e., minor missiles, summoned weapons, etc.) or the "this is a decisive spell that you bust out for boss fights or the big closer in a standard fight" (i.e., Ningauth's Shadowflame). First category needs to be relatively quick and easy; save the long cast durations for the second category. Oh and give people who aren't wizards a way to generate Concentration. Best solutions, IMHO.